How to Be at Your Best in 2020 – #2: Self Awareness

By: Executive Pastor Dan Zimbardi

What is your one thing?

We are continuing to talk about identifying what’s the one thing that we need to work on this year to be at our best at work and home. Number one was healing—for some of us, the one thing is deep personal healing. See that post here. 

Today we will talk about number two. Subscribe here, so you don’t miss any of the next four posts.

This is a big one. 

Number Two: Self-Awareness. 

For some of us, we need to grow in self-awareness. A lot of that starts with awakening to how people experience you.

Here’s the big idea:

A self-aware person understands how people experience them.

There is a reality that some of you are genuinely asleep to yourself. You are not aware of how others experience you, how you present yourself consistently, how you relate to people, and how you interact with some folks. If you don’t have the influence you want at work, especially if you don’t feel like you have the influence that you deserve and if you say, “I’m just not being recognized,” there’s a chance you are struggling with self-awareness. Perhaps this is the thing that you need to work on this year.

 It starts by making adjustments to how you connect with people. A self-aware person understands how people experience them. A self-aware person is “relationally agile.” They understand how a group of people is experiencing them, and they make adjustments. They are able to recognize when they are running everyone over in a meeting or over-talking and realize they need to be quiet or just listen. They understand when they are too firm or too strong. Sometimes it is because they see the person they are addressing wince. Growth is recognizing the wince for what it is—a sign that they are too harsh. There is such a critical correlation to your self-awareness and the influence you have. It is not just at work; it’s in your life.

If you lack self-awareness, you likely have a diminished influence
at work, home, and in your community.  

If you think growing in self-awareness is the thing that you need to work on this year, here’s the question I want you to process: 

Question: Do I have the influence I want at work and in my relationships?

Action: Ask the people around you – How do you experience me? 

This is a tough question, and I want to encourage you if your plan to pursue this, ask the truth-tellers in your life. Maybe they can even speak to what they understand about how other people experience you. We all have blind spots by nature, and we can’t always see these things in our self. If you want to grow to be more of an influencer of people you have to grow in self-awareness.

Pastor Dan Zimbardi has been the Executive Pastor of Sandals Church, one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in America, for the past eight years. Dan spent twenty-two years as an entrepreneur and corporate executive and has worked with some of the most dynamic brands in the world, including Google, Nike, and Burton Snowboards. Dan’s passion is to train and develop leaders both in ministry and the marketplace.